DOWDING & MILLS LAUNCHES NEW TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE TRAINING COURSE
16 October, 2002

Manufacturers can benefit from a newly launched training course from Dowding & Mills aimed at introducing Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) techniques to machine operators. Entitled ‘Engineering Skills to TPM level 1’, the course aims to teach basic maintenance skills to aid people in their everyday work.

Dowding & Mills has been providing repair and maintenance services to industry since the early 1900s and is an expert in its field. Modern trends now lean increasingly towards preventative maintenance, an area which Dowding & Mills has a great deal of experience, for example, it offers extensive condition monitoring services to help identify faults before they become a problem. Dowding & Mills is now sharing its years of experience and knowledge with industry by providing TPM training courses to give machine operators the necessary skills to assist in the prevention of breakdowns.

Widely used throughout industry TPM is the systematic performance of maintenance by all staff aiming at zero breakdowns, zero defects and maximum output. It is a proven vehicle for delivering culture change, asset effectiveness and loss reduction and is now being adopted by many companies and organisations in a range of industries. TPM aims to establish good maintenance practice through the pursuit of five goals: improved equipment effectiveness, autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, staff trained in relative maintenance skills and ‘early’ equipment management.

The five day course includes both theory and practical work with a continuous emphasis on health & safety. The course content includes use of basic hand tools, packing glands, gaskets, alignment, selection and fitting of bearings, troubleshooting, changing simple units and vee belt changing. It can be run from any of Dowding & Mills’ UK facilities, or at the customer’s site, and the content can be tailored to meet the needs of individual customers.

For example, Dowding & Mills’ alliance partners BSL, has utilised this new resource to provide training for machine operators and papermaking apprentices at the Georgia Pacific Paper Mill at Oughtibridge, near Sheffield, to meet Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) objectives.

Jacquie Asquith, training manager at Georgia Pacific, said: “We have had a number of new recruits join us recently and we wanted to provide them and other employees who had expressed an interest in TPM with a solid grounding in basic maintenance.

“It will enable them to spot any problems that might occur with the machinery that they are using at the earliest possible stage and either carry out the necessary maintenance or call in an engineer when necessary.”

David Scatchard, technical training & business support manager at Dowding & Mills, said: “The TPM Level 1 course is proving popular, particularly because of the flexibility of its content. A number of companies have expressed an interest in more advanced TPM training and work is already underway to develop a TPM Level 2 course.”